The Madison Common Council passed an ordinance last spring raising the city's minimum wage. The alders were aiming to help the working poor in a way that federal and state officials have miserably failed to. Sponsors of Madison's effort realized the need to help those who work full-time and yet barely earn enough to live. But Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature refuse to understand. They have blocked a statewide wage increase that was supposed to begin last fall. And now they are trying to stop local communities from ever again deciding how much their workers should earn.
Last year a bipartisan panel of business and labor leaders appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle overwhelmingly recommended that the state's minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.50. When a state agency issued an administrative rule to implement the panel's recommendation, Republicans blocked it. Earlier this year, GOP leaders extended the period they can continue to block the wage increase without actually voting on it by eight months, meaning the minimum wage will remain $5.15 until December 2006.
Democrats have introduced a bill that calls for the Legislature to take up the minimum wage rule, but GOP leaders have buried it in committee. Republicans don't want to be seen as voting against a small wage increase for the estimated 130,000 minimum-wage workers in Wisconsin. So, they just refuse to vote on it. Nevertheless, they are fine with voting for their own pay increases. As Doyle has pointed out, in the seven years that Wisconsin's minimum wage has remained frozen, lawmakers have voted themselves seven pay raises.
Consider this: a person working 40 hours a week at minimum wage earns $206 a week before taxes. Do you think that's enough to live on? Or enough to raise a family with? The stagnant minimum wage is a main reason why Wisconsin Works, our state's welfare-to-work program, has failed to boost families out of poverty. As a fundamental moral principle, work should be financially rewarding enough so that people who labor full time aren't poor.
Republicans have argued that the minimum wage really only goes to teens that are looking for pocket change rather than adults who are supporting a family. In reality, half of Wisconsin's minimum wage workers are over 25. And even though they had their facts wrong, do Republicans not care about the teenagers and young adults that are trying to earn money to pay for their college education? State lawmakers are curbing what we can earn while letting our tuition costs soar.
Madison is not the only Wisconsin city that has approved its own minimum wage. Milwaukee and now La Crosse have voted to increase wages for the cities' lowest-paid workers. But this month the Wisconsin Senate passed SB 147 and Monday, the Assembly Labor Committee approved AB 49. Both bills would prohibit local governments from enacting their own minimum wages. If signed by Doyle, such legislation would outlaw the ordinances passed in Madison, Milwaukee and La Crosse. It would horribly weaken the fight to improve the lives of Wisconsin's lowest-paid workers.
First, there is the plain fact that it costs more to live in Madison than it does in say, Shawano. But more importantly, state law rightfully permits cities to raise the minimum wage if they see fit. These minimum wage ordinances aren't the result of some 'activist judges' whom conservatives so often decry for making policy against the wishes of the public. The wage increases were passed by locally-elected bodies that, after studying their cities' economic conditions, decided that increasing the minimum wage will improve their cities.
There's talk that Doyle is considering signing either SB 147 or AB 49 in exchange for Republicans agreeing to a one-time increase in the statewide minimum wage to $6.50. Although this may sound like an even trade, banning all local wage ordinances will take away a very powerful bargaining chip. If local increases are preempted, cities will no longer be able to compel the Legislature to recognize the injustice facing Wisconsin's working poor. What will happen in eight years, when the minimum wage will again need adjustment, if Republicans still control the Legislature? How will we force unresponsive state lawmakers to the negotiating table? A one-time wage increase will not justify Madison or any other city relinquishing the right to fight for a fair minimum wage in the future.
